One role of being mayor in the Passaic County town was to preside over marriage ceremonies, and the borough had a tradition of giving new couples a Bible. But when Sinsimer took office in January 1988, he found that the Bibles were locked in a cabinet. And the key was missing.

Former Pompton Lakes Mayor John Sinsimer looks toward DuPont's former munitions site in the borough. In 1988 he was credited with broadening an investigation of groundwater contamination on site to the adjacent neighborhood.(Photo: Chris Pedota/NorthJersey.com)

When he finally got the cabinet drilled open, Sinsimer discovered more than Bibles.

Stacked inside were three large binders, marked “DuPont.”

What the documents described was stunning: A plume of groundwater contaminated with cancer-causing solvents had migrated off DuPont’s property and under an adjacent neighborhood.

Until then, Sinsimer had no idea the plume existed. Neither did most of the public.

If he hadn’t been searching for Bibles, it might have stayed that way.

“Nobody in the affected neighborhoods were aware of anything about it,” Sinsimer recently recalled.

The binders contained documents DuPont had filed with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection the prior year for a permit to clean up a polluted pond at its Pompton Lakes munitions facility — a plant that for a century helped outfit America’s soldiers with ammunition.

DuPont had used the so-called “shooting pond” for decades to explode defective blasting caps.

No longer concerned with the Bibles, Sinsimer opened a binder, and a letter fell out. It indicated that just a few weeks remained for the borough to comment on the permit application.

Sinsimer learned of the DuPont contamination by accident — and just in the nick of time.

It was an early example of what became a decades-long pattern by DuPont to share a paucity of information on its contamination with Pompton Lakes residents.

The shooting pond at the former DuPont munitions site in Pompton Lakes, seen in 2002. It was used to detonate faulty blasting caps for decades and was a source of pollution before being closed in 1988 and then cleaned up.(Photo: File Photo/NorthJersey.com)

An investigation by The Record and NorthJersey.com shows for the first time the extent to which DuPont pushed back against regulators about the cancer-causing contamination at its Pompton Lakes site and in the nearby neighborhood, told the public they had nothing to worry about, and delayed efforts to clean up the contamination or protect its neighbors from potential health consequences of the pollutants.

One constant in the story of DuPont’s contamination in Pompton Lakes was how little information the company — and regulators — shared with the public along the way.

“It was a company town,” said Joanne Gormley, who grew up across from the DuPont property in the 1940s and raised her own family there in the 1980s. “All my family worked there.

“I feel kind of betrayed,” said Gormley, whose husband worked at DuPont and died of brain cancer at age 54. “DuPont’s a huge company. They knew about this contamination a long time before we did.”

As Sinsimer read through DuPont’s permit request, he recalled what neighbors near the DuPont site kept telling him as he had campaigned for mayor.

“I found out that people in this neighborhood had all kinds of strange, exotic illnesses,” he said. “There were a lot of autoimmune diseases, a lot of lupus, Crohn’s disease, full-blown psoriasis. Kids had experienced a lot of learning disabilities.”

Sinsimer quickly assembled experts to read through the binders and help him craft a response to state regulators. The mayor’s team realized the permit to clean up DuPont’s shooting pond did not require any testing in the neighborhood — just on the DuPont site.

So Sinsimer decided to push DuPont and state regulators for a wider groundwater investigation.

In June 1988, the state held a public meeting to discuss the permit and the wider pollution. It was the first time the public was fully informed that groundwater was contaminated beneath the adjacent neighborhood.

At the meeting, DuPont said it “has been and will remain a responsible community citizen concerning the environment. … At Pompton Lakes Works, the plant operations and waste disposal practices have always been consistent with regulations and current practices.”

Sinsimer’s discovery and the subsequent public meeting were key moments to some residents.

A 1988 letter to the state DEP in which DuPont objected to the controls the state was requiring over contamination cleanup.(Photo: NorthJersey.com)

“DuPont tried to argue that the permit they received from DEP and the hearing were based solely on closing the shooting pond and I had no bearing to bring up the possibility of offsite contamination,” Sinsimer recalled.

“That hearing, I felt, saved the town,” he said. “I think it pushed the DEP. Nothing would have happened off-site.”

Soon after, DuPont signed an agreement with the state that required the company to determine the extent of the pollution not only on the DuPont property, but also in the nearby neighborhood.

And, more importantly, to clean up the contaminated groundwater that had traveled under the neighborhood.

But even as they negotiated the wording, DuPont chafed at the state regulators’ requirements. “We believe the order needlessly enhances the NJDEP’s enforcement powers,” the company complained in a letter, “especially considering the responsible position DuPont has always taken on environmental matters.”

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A brief history of DuPont's plant operation since 1902, environmental studies conducted, and documented interactions with state and federal government agencies.
Paul Wood, Jr./NorthJersey.com

A recent aerial image of the former DuPont site, with the Shooting Pond to the right of Cannonball Road, and Acid Brook flowing to the left of the roadway.

(Photo: Peter Carr and Ricky Flores/LoHud.com)

Unlined lagoons

Solvents seep into groundwater

The state first discovered pollution at the DuPont site in 1980. That summer, regulators showed up at DuPont’s 600-acre campus for an inspection.

The visit turned up major problems — and sparked a nearly 40-year battle between regulators and DuPont over contamination at the site.

While DuPont made blasting caps at the facility, which helped America win two world wars, it also left a darker legacy: lead and mercury in backyards, mercury in the sediment of Pompton Lake, and a plume of groundwater laced with cancer-causing solvents beneath more than 400 homes.

Even though DuPont signed the 1988 agreement to clean up the contaminated plume, that plume remains today, largely unaddressed.

DuPont declined to comment for this series. They referred questions to a spinoff company, Chemours, which inherited about 170 of DuPont’s contaminated sites across the country, including Pompton Lakes.

Internal 1980 state DEP document outlining various violations at the DuPont facility in Pompton Lakes.(Photo: NorthJersey.com)

“The remediation of a complex site like Pompton Lakes is a lengthy and complicated process,” Robin Ollis Stemple, a Chemours spokeswoman, said in an email.

“While we all wish that this could be done more quickly, Chemours is committed to doing the work in a way that is thorough, science-based, protective of people and the environment and in accordance with all guidance” provided by regulators, she said.

As DEP officials toured DuPont’s Pompton Lakes campus for that 1980 inspection — a site DuPont had operated since 1902 — the regulators grew uneasy about several open ponds DuPont used to dispose of wastes.

One was the shooting pond.

It was about 40 feet wide and 15 feet deep, and sat at the north end of the campus next to Acid Brook — a stream that flowed through the DuPont site before continuing into a residential area and emptying into Pompton Lake.

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Interview with David Epps, Director of the DuPont site in Pompton Lakes, filmed in 2009. Epps questioned why fewer than 150 households requested installation of systems to treat vapor intrusion in their homes.
Chris Pedota/NorthJersey.com

For decades, DuPont detonated about 100 defective blasting caps in the pond every 10 minutes, five days a week.

Sludge had to be cleaned out periodically. DuPont would dredge the sludge and spread it on the ground around the pond, according to state reports.

The state also noted potential danger from four lagoons in the southern portion of DuPont’s property, near a neighborhood. The lagoons measured up to 400 feet across, more than the length of a football field.

Lagoon 2, seen here in 1989, was one of four on the DuPont site in Pompton Lakes that leaked cancer-causing solvents TCE and PCE into groundwater below.(Photo: State Department of Environmental Protection)

For decades, DuPont discharged wastewater into the lagoons from its manufacturing areas, according to government reports. The wastewater included the solvents PCE and TCE, which DuPont used to clean machinery, and which have been linked to several forms of cancer and other illnesses.

A DEP memo described the water in one lagoon as “milky gray in color” with an oily sheen. “A black oily sediment was noticeable at the edge of the lagoon.”

The lagoons were unlined.

Asked recently why DuPont would dump wastewater into unlined lagoons, Chemours answered: “DuPont operated the processes at the facility in accordance with applicable permits and regulations in force at that time.”

As later studies confirmed, the solvents were seeping through the bottom of the lagoons to contaminate groundwater below.

The state decided to act.

Monitoring wells, seen here in 2002, used to test for contamination in groundwater around the shooting pond on the former DuPont munitions site in Pompton Lakes. The pond was used to explode defective blasting caps and was a cause of pollution that migrated offsite.

(Photo: File Photo/NorthJersey.com)

Decades of arguments begin

DuPont vs Environmental Regulators

In October 1980, the DEP sent DuPont a laundry list of violations. It said “the discharge of shell cleaning wastewater into lagoons which percolate into the groundwater without approval or permit from the state is a violation.”

In what would become a decades-long pattern, DuPont pushed back, arguing that the lagoons were grandfathered.

“It is the DuPont corporate policy and mandate to obey all federal, state and local laws and regulations,” the company wrote. “We do not however believe we have violated any of your regulations. … Since the facilities in question were in existence when your regulations went into effect it is certainly not clear that the regulations were applicable in our case.”

The DEP ordered DuPont to study how groundwater moved beneath its property, and to install monitoring wells to test for contamination.

The wells detected PCE and TCE in groundwater near the lagoons, and TCE near the shooting pond.

“The elimination of the use of the lagoons” was “of particular importance,” the DEP wrote.

By February 1982 DuPont agreed to stop using the lagoons.

But the shooting pond was another story. DuPont had no other way to dispose of defective blasting caps. It insisted in April 1982 that the “shooting pond is not a cause of concern.”

In July, it sent new groundwater test results to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, as required under a federal program.

A 1982 DuPont letter to the state arguing the shooting pond could not contaminate groundwater. A skeptical DEP official wrote "Bull!" at the bottom.(Photo: NorthJersey.com)

In its letter to the EPA, DuPont claimed the shooting pond could not contaminate the groundwater and larger aquifer beneath the region. It said the groundwater with TCE was “perched” — an isolated pocket of water blocked off by bedrock from the larger aquifer below.

Chemours said in a recent email that the shooting pond was “in a remote, northern portion of the site in solid rock, so the potential to impact groundwater, if any, was minimal.”

State regulators were skeptical.

On an internal copy of DuPont’s letter asserting that the groundwater beneath the shooting pond was isolated from the larger aquifer, one regulator wrote next to the paragraph, “not true.” Another pointedly scrawled, “Bull!”

A 2009 view of the shooting pond, which had been cleaned of contaminants by then.

(Photo: Chris Pedota/NorthJersey.com)

'Unfounded and irresponsible'

Regulators push back

The water in the shooting pond was disappearing.

Every day, DuPont needed to refill the pond with 700 gallons of water from a hose.

The DEP said it could be lost by evaporation, by splashing onto the ground and into Acid Brook during the explosions, and by infiltration — percolating down through the soil and fractures in bedrock, mixing with groundwater.

“Infiltration is most likely the major component,” a memo said.

The state concluded that DuPont should apply for a permit to operate the shooting pond, noting that samples since 1979 showed “a groundwater problem.”

A 1982 memo in which a DEP regulator refutes as "irresponsible" DuPont claims about contamination on its Pompton Lakes site.(Photo: NorthJersey.com)

In one memo, DEP geologist Steven Parisio skewered DuPont’s claims.

DuPont said the shooting pond area was a “very restricted groundwater system.” Parisio wrote, “This area is drained by a perennial stream,” referring to Acid Brook.

Parisio noted that DuPont’s own groundwater map showed water flowing through soil into bedrock below. “Apparently they don’t know how to interpret their own map!” he wrote.

DuPont claimed the shooting pond was isolated from the larger aquifer and therefore not a concern. Parisio wrote, “This statement is totally unfounded and irresponsible.”

Parisio also addressed the fact that the shooting pond needed to be refilled daily.

He wrote, “it hardly matters whether the water splashes out of the pond or leaks out of the sides and bottom, the point is that polluted water is being discharged to the ground and/or the stream at a rate of at least 700 gal/day.”

One of several test wells that monitor groundwater in Pompton Lakes contaminated by DuPont.

(Photo: Chris Pedota/NorthJersey.com)

Startling conclusions

Contaminated groundwater is leaving the site

By November 1984, the state had more groundwater data and DuPont’s hydrogeological report. The data prompted the DEP to make some alarming conclusions.

One was that “the most severe and most threatening contamination exists in the southern area…near the four lagoons. Concentrations as high as 1867 parts per billion total volatile organics exist in this area.”

The other was that groundwater beneath the DuPont site flowed south.

“Therefore, contaminated groundwater is leaving the site through the southern plant boundary.”

It was the first time the state noted that the contamination was migrating off DuPont’s property.

Just beyond that southern boundary was the residential neighborhood. And 26 homes had private wells that tapped the groundwater. But nobody told residents contaminated groundwater could be lurking beneath their homes.

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Former Pompton Lakes Mayor John Sinsimer explains how DuPont's plant operation spread chemicals off its property and into Acid Brook and groundwater.
Chris Pedota/NorthJersey.com

Instead, in October 1985, DuPont sent a letter to some residents, saying that groundwater was contaminated beneath the munitions factory. Plant manager Anthony V. Scancella told residents: “I want to assure you that there is no health concern for you or your family.”

Two months later, Scancella sent an update: DuPont had sampled water from nine residential wells, and five contained solvents.

Scancella said DuPont was “instituting a program to clean up this contaminated groundwater.” He added, “Our policy at DuPont is to do whatever is necessary to protect human health and the environment from our operations, and we intend to follow that policy.”

Scancella concluded: “I want to reemphasize that there is no health concern for you or your family from the low levels of solvents.”

The solvent levels were not low.

A state document indicates one well had contamination of nearly 5,600 parts per billion. The DEP’s current groundwater standard for the solvents in the groundwater are 1 part per billion each – the equivalent of one drop in an Olympic-size swimming pool.

Of the 26 homes with wells, a few were used for drinking water; the others were used to water gardens and fill swimming pools.

DuPont hooked up homes that used their wells for drinking water to the municipal system.

Former Pompton Lakes Mayor John Sinsimer uncovered information in 1988 about pollution on the DuPont site and pushed to have wider investigation of groundwater into the adjacent residential neighborhood.(Photo: Chris Pedota/NorthJersey.com)

“We had a well,” recalled longtime resident Joanne Gormley. “We drank that water. We thought it was great water. Turned out it was not. We filled the backyard pool with it.”

Eventually, with Mayor Sinsimer’s efforts in 1988, the public learned about the plume of contaminated water beneath their homes.

Some residents praised Sinsimer’s aggressive approach. Others were angry that DuPont — which had provided jobs and retirement pensions — was getting a black eye.

“I started getting threats,” Sinsimer recalled. “People said I was going to bankrupt the corporation. They said they were going to lose their jobs and pensions. My tires were slashed. My wife ended up in the hospital because of the stress.”

Sinsimer decided not to run for a second term as mayor. He eventually moved to South Carolina, where he teaches high school English. He recently self-published a novel based on his experience fighting DuPont, called “The Brook.”

“The minute I left office, everything seemed to come to a complete stop,” Sinsimer said. “The new administration went back to the old situation where they weren’t demanding anything of DuPont.

“DuPont has been manipulating the mayors and the DEP and EPA for years,” he said. “Nobody is holding their feet to the fire. If they had, this whole problem would have been gone by now.”

Acid Brook flows through the former DuPont munitions site in Pompton Lakes and then on into an adjacent neighborhood. The brook deposited lead and mercury from the DuPont site onto nearby backyard lawns as well as in the sediment of Pompton Lake.

(Photo: Chris Pedota/NorthJersey.com)

In depth: Acid Brook

The aptly-named Acid Brook flows past a pond on the DuPont campus where faulty explosives were detonated. The water deadened the concussive impact.

That so-called “shooting pond” was unlined, and contained lead and mercury detritus, as well as other wastewater from the manufacture of two explosive powders that DuPont used for its blasting caps.

The chemicals found their way into the brook, which traveled through a neighborhood adjacent to DuPont before emptying into Pompton Lake.

Each time the brook overflowed, the contaminants washed across backyards, where children played each day and adults relaxed or gardened, unaware of the health threat lurking in their soil.

In spring 1990, tests showed elevated levels of mercury and lead in the backyards of homes along the banks of Acid Brook, just south of the DuPont facility.

Exposure to mercury can damage nervous systems and harm the brain, heart, kidneys, lungs and immune system. Lead can damage the nervous system, kidneys and reproductive system.

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While we all enjoy DuPont's products, the price 'is not worth it,' says former resident Jefferson Harman LaSala, who faults DuPont, the EPA and the DEP for past actions and proposed plans to address contamination.
Chris Pedota/NorthJersey.com

A child who swallows large amounts of lead may develop blood anemia, severe stomachache, muscle weakness and brain damage. Even at much lower levels of exposure, lead can affect a child's mental and physical growth, according to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

Neighborhood children often played in Acid Brook. It was shallow, and parents didn’t worry about anybody drowning.

But residents recalled that it often had an odd appearance.

“The brook was always a weird color,” recalled Joanne Gormley, who grew up in the neighborhood in the 1940s and lived there as an adult. “I explain it as a kind of greenish color, like antifreeze. We were kids, so we thought all brooks looked like that. Boys used to trap muskrats there. I hope they didn’t eat them.”

As early as 1979, regulators detected problems with the brook’s water quality.

During a statewide survey of industrial plants that discharged toxic material into rivers and streams, the DEP collected water from Acid Brook, and put the water in a container. Then they put fathead minnows in the water sample.

Within 17 hours, 40 percent of the minnows had died, according to an internal report. Staff recommended a follow-up test, but that didn’t happen for two years.

The second test, in May 1981, confirmed that the water in Acid Brook was toxic. But a DEP staffer wrote that the “probable cause of this toxicity is not presently known.”

It was almost a decade later when tests revealed the extent of the contamination.

During summer 1990, tests showed that backyards near Acid Brook, just a stone’s throw from the DuPont property, were tainted with so much lead and mercury that residents were warned not to touch the ground.

Samples for lead were as high as 2,340 milligrams per kilogram, while the state cleanup criterion for lead was 250.

DuPont announced plans to clean up the mess, digging the contaminated dirt out of backyards and replacing it with clean fill. Until that could be done, the company offered to have a landscaper lay strips of sod on bare spots in the yards.

From 1991 to 1996, DuPont spent $70 million to rebuild the Acid Brook stream bed, clean out the yards of about 140 homes along a 1½-mile section of the brook and – since residents could have unknowingly tracked contaminated soil and dust inside with them – wipe down basements that had elevated levels of mercury and lead.

At former Mayor John Sinsimer’s urging, DuPont also provided a buyout and relocation plan for those who wanted to leave the neighborhood. The company cleaned those houses and then resold them to new residents.

The DEP during this period also seemed to temper its enforcement.

In a DEP memo outlining the ground rules for a March 1996 meeting with DuPont to discuss how to validate data from the residential cleanups along Acid Brook, the agency stated: “Listen as allies. (We’re in this together and we get to both live by the decisions.)”

During the middle of the cleanup, in spring 1993, more than 400 Pompton Lakes residents joined a class-action suit against DuPont, charging that the lead and mercury pollution caused illnesses and reduced property values. The suit was started on behalf of two widows of DuPont workers.

DuPont would settle the case in 1997 for nearly $40 million, with the average payout being $90,000. The highest award, of $271,000, went to a 13-year-old with lead poisoning.

Part of the equipment DuPont installed on its property in 1998 to capture contaminated groundwater, strip out the cancer-causing solvents, and then pump the cleaned water back into the ground.

(Photo: N)

In depth: Pump and treat

By early 1989, the state Department of Environmental Protection was expressing internal frustration at the pace of progress to stop the continued flow of toxic solvents off the DuPont site.

In a memo that January, Anne Young, a DEP geologist, wrote that DuPont “has done nothing to halt the spread of off-site contamination.”

“The off-site migration of the contaminated groundwater is a threat to human health,” she wrote, and “requires the most immediate action.”

A month later, Young noted that residents were never required to seal their domestic wells when hooking up to the municipal water supply, and there was no ordinance in place that would keep people from installing new wells in the plume neighborhood.

She added that “at a DuPont-sponsored public meeting, DuPont informed people there was no reason for concern about the groundwater in the area. It appears that the public is possibly being misled about the problem.”

Young argued, “The people of Pompton Lakes should at least be made aware that pollution exists and told that they should not use any wells in the polluted area…Children should be cautioned not to drink the water.”

The memo noted that the 1988 agreement between DuPont and the state required DuPont to install a system to halt the further spread of contamination off its property. The memo said the system “could be online within a year or so.”

Late in 1989, the DEP sent a letter to DuPont, saying the agency “feels that treatment of the contaminated groundwater plume leaving the site should be given priority and initiated as quickly as practical.”

Nearly a decade later, in 1998, DuPont installed a $1.2 million pump-and-treat system on the southern edge of its property to keep further contamination from flowing off its site and under adjacent homes.

The system pulls groundwater up from beneath the DuPont property and runs it through a machine called an air stripper to remove the solvents. The cleaned water is pumped back into the ground at the edge of the site. The system has been operating ever since, cleaning about 8,000 gallons of groundwater a day.

The system is not designed to treat the contaminated plume under homes in the adjacent neighborhood.

Aerial image showing the equipment at the edge of Pompton Lake used in the $50 million operation to dredge contaminated sediment from the lake.

(Photo: CHRIS PEDOTA / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHE)

In depth: Dredging Pompton Lake

Because Acid Brook flows through the former DuPont munitions site into Pompton Lake, the same contaminants that had polluted so many backyards along the brook — lead and mercury — also made their way into the lake sediment.

After years of sediment sampling and arguing between DuPont and regulators about how much sediment to remove, a $50 million project to dredge about 130,000 cubic yards of Pompton Lake sediment over a 36-acre area near the mouth of Acid Brook began in summer 2016. It continued last year, with nearly 2,700 truckloads of sediment removed.

Some residents had lobbied the federal Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a more extensive cleanup that included parts of the lake where lower levels of mercury were detected in the sediment, but officials decided against that.

This spring, in the project’s final phase, the shoreline will be restored with native plants, and a layer of clean sediment will be spread over the dredged areas.

The EPA wanted the contaminated sediment removed because a toxic form of mercury can build up in fish, posing a health risk to humans who eat them. Exposure to mercury can damage the nervous system and harm the brain, heart, kidneys, lungs and immune system.

The lake is still used by residents for water skiing, boating and fishing, but it is so contaminated that fishermen are warned not to eat their catch.

The 200-acre Pompton Lake is also a backup source to replenish the Wanaque Reservoir, which supplies drinking water to towns in Bergen and Passaic counties.

It was tapped last year, for instance, as water levels in the reservoir dropped because of a lack of rain. Pumping started up again in January, sending up to 90 million gallons a day from the Ramapo River at Pompton Lake to replenish the Wanaque’s drinking water supply.

About the Project

James M. O'Neill joined The Record in 2008 and has covered environmental issues since then. He previously worked in the Providence Journal’s Washington bureau, covered higher education at the Philadelphia Inquirer, and had stints at the Dallas Morning News and Bloomberg News.

Scott Fallon has been a member of The Record’s environment team for 10 years, focusing on New Jersey’s legacy of industrial pollution and how it still impacts residents. He previously worked at The Philadelphia Inquirer and has written for Newsday and the New York Daily News.

Chris Pedota is a multimedia producer at The Record, where he has been since 2000. He has covered politics, news and sports including the events of 9/11, Operation Desert Shield as well as the Super Bowl and World Series.

Michael V. Pettigano joined The Record in 2012 and is currently digital developer and video producer for NorthJersey.com. His digital presentations include the Bridgegate scandal, The Record's award-winning heroin coverage, Superstorm Sandy, and presidential, state and local elections.

Daniel Sforza is the investigative editor at The Record and has been with the company since 1994. His previous work includes overseeing the coverage of the Bridgegate scandal, The Record’s Pulitzer-finalist heroin coverage, and award-winning investigative coverage of NJ Transit. Over the previous year, he has led investigative coverage of charter schools in New Jersey, the mob, and stories about a cold-case murder of a New Jersey woman that resulted in arrests in Oklahoma.

Susan Lupow is a digital producer and editor for The Record and NorthJersey.com who has a particular interest in environmental issues. She has worked for The Record since 1985.